Notes on the Piano

In Notes on the Piano, composer, pianist, and teacher Ernst Bacon presents a sensitive, insightful guide to interpreting and living with the piano. Originally published in 1963 by Syracuse University Press, the work offers a blend of practical counsel, philosophical reflection, and musical wisdom drawn from Bacon's deep experience at the keyboard.

Divided into five thematic sections — The Performer, The Learner, The Player and Writer, and more — Bacon addresses topics from interpretive decisions and listening habits to the relationship between expression, technique, and musical thought. His tone is at once congenial and authoritative: he does not lecture; rather, he invites the reader into a conversation about music's deeper affordances.

Throughout Notes on the Piano, Bacon's voice emerges not as an ivory-tower theorist but as a companion at the bench, attuned to the small gestures — rubato, pedaling, phrasing — that distinguish a mechanical performance from a living one. His reflections are practical yet open-ended: he encourages humility, the cultivation of listening, and the acknowledgment that even the greatest pianist remains a student of music.

 More than a how-to manual, this work stands as a musical memoir in microcosm — an affirmation of the piano as a site of lifelong exploration and poetic dialogue. Decades after its first edition, Notes on the Piano is still widely read today among pianists, teachers, and musical thinkers who seek not just to play, but to commune.